


turn toward the camera and smile, smile, smile

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Series: let's spit on his grave [1]
Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Injury, Murder, Nudity, Trauma, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23246956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Addy reaches for her vibrating cell phone in a somnambulate motion, still half-asleep. Her mouth has this dry, sticky feeling and she barely registers answering her phone. Doesn’t even realize that the tired, throaty, “hello?” has left her lips until Beth’s breath catches on the other end.“It’s bad, Addy.”She can hear Beth hyperventilating on the other end of the line, these rapid, ratty, frantic breaths.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Series: let's spit on his grave [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731322
Comments: 10
Kudos: 112





	turn toward the camera and smile, smile, smile

**Author's Note:**

> Just a 'what if' type of scenario rolling around in my head. Addy still gets a call and there's still a body, but the caller and the body are different this time around. 
> 
> Title is from A Softer World comic 208.

Addy reaches for her vibrating cell phone in a somnambulate motion, barely half-awake. Her mouth has this dry, sticky feeling and she barely registers answering her phone. Doesn’t even realize that the tired, throaty, “hello?” has left her lips until Beth’s breath catches on the other end. 

“It’s bad, Addy.” 

“Beth, do you know what time—“ 

“Addy, it’s bad!” Beth interrupts in this harsh whisper that gives Addy pause. 

She can hear Beth hyperventilating on the other end of the line, these rapid, ratty, frantic breaths.

“What’s going on?” Addy asks, sharpening with alarm. 

“Come over,” Beth begs between gasps. “Please, please, Addy, I need you to come over right now!” 

“Alright,” Addy says, sitting up, glancing around her room for her shoes. “I’m coming. Try to keep calm until I get there, try not to do anything stupid.” 

“I think I already did,” Beth whimpers. 

She hangs up before Addy can ask anything else. 

* * *

Everything feels surreal, maybe like it’s not really happening. Like Addy slipped out of the world and into somewhere else for awhile. Cloudless night sky above her, not another car in sight. She pulls in the driveway and Beth’s house is very, very dark. Something cold settles in her stomach as she approaches the back door. 

It’s odd that she knows to do that. Beth didn’t instruct her to come in through the back, and yet Addy knows that she is meant to. She turns the knob and opens the door as little as possible, slinking inside. She walks the three titled steps up into the kitchen and then she sees. 

It. 

Him. 

Kurtz on his back, on the floor. Camouflage pants fallen around his ankles, muscular, hairy legs exposed. Penis flaccid against his thigh, streaked with gummy blood smears thickest at the tip. Blood and more blood the higher her eyes travel up his prone form, soaking through his pea green shirt. 

His head is cocked at an awkward angle and protruding from the side of his bloody neck is a broken bottle. A corona of crimson pools around his shaven head and his empty eyes stare in Beth’s direction, almost as if he’s still leering at her. 

Beth cowers in the corner of the kitchen, bloody hands clutched to her chest. Her eyes dart to Addy, a sapphire flicker beneath the yellowy wash of the dim kitchen light. Or, rather, her eye darts. Singular. The other is so purple and puffed up, it looks like someone stuffed a plum right in the socket. 

When Beth stands at the top of the pyramid, her legs are strong and sturdy as hickory limbs. They never shake. Addy would know, Addy would feel it. Addy is always there, Beth’s clean white cheer shoe held firmly in her grasp. She’s never known Beth’s legs to shake. 

Now, here in the corner of the kitchen, Kurtz’s dead eyes accusing her, Beth’s legs won’t stop shaking. They quake so violently, knees knocking together, fresh blood trickling over the streams drying inside her thighs. Beth is not on her period, she can’t be, she’d finished pillaging the tampon box in Addy’s locker last week. The blood on Kurtz’s penis is not his own. The blood around the broken bottle is, though, the blood that paints his ruined throat. 

Addy hears this strange, kitten weak, whining sound. It takes her a moment to realize the noise is coming from herself. 

“I couldn’t breathe, Addy,” Beth is babbling suddenly, her uninjured eye wavering. “He was on top of me and he was so heavy, Addy, he was so heavy, he crushed the fucking breath out of me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe, I had to. I couldn’t breathe but he wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stop, Addy, I had to make him stop.” 

Now she’s hyperventilating all over again, as though the breath is still being crushed out of her, bloody hands uncurled and flapping wildly through the air. 

Addy shuts her eyes against the sight. 

Beth calls her name again, begging. 

Addy thinks she wants to scream. There’s something like a scream inside of her, expanding like a balloon and then silently strangling itself before it can find its way into her mouth. What does find its way into her mouth is vomit, hot and wretched. 

Addy snaps forward over the kitchen sink and purges, frothy regurgitation splattering against the stainless steel. Beth makes a noise like a sob and it’s contagious, it must be. Addy suddenly feels like she’ll start any minute. 

“What the fuck, Beth,” she croaks out. “What is he doing here?” 

“He’s dead.” Beth gestures. 

“Yeah! I can see that, Beth,” Addy gasps, frazzled, grasping at her hair. “But why is he here?” 

For a heartbeat, Beth is silent. Addy can’t stop staring at her black eye. She absently notices that it reflects Kurtz’s own black eye, same side of the face and everything. Except his is just a tad older, more faded, less swollen.

“He saw me talking to your mom at school today,” she says eventually, voice low. “She was just inviting me to dinner at your house. But she was in uniform, so he made assumptions.” 

“Assumptions,” Addy parrots.

“That I went to the cops about what happened at the Playland,” Beth continues and this is how Addy learns that something in fact did happen. “He was so pissed, Addy. He wouldn’t listen to me, he wouldn’t listen to anything.” 

Part of Addy wishes she never would’ve picked up the phone. Part of her wishes she would’ve just rolled over and went back to sleep. She doesn’t want to be here, or anywhere, with a dead body on the floor. 

But Beth calls her name again, and by god, Addy has never heard her utter anything else so desperately. 

“Where’s your mom?” she asks. 

“Boozing it up with some loser she met on the internet.” Beth chews the edge of her thumbnail, undoubtedly getting Kurtz’s blood into her mouth and seeming not to notice at all. “Don’t call yours, Addy. Please don’t call your mom.” 

Addy glances down to the broken bottle sticking out of Kurtz’s throat. She looks back to the blood between Beth’s legs and wonders if it would mean anything, if it would make a difference to the people Faith Hanlon would inevitably have to report to. In a world that didn’t stack the odds of Beth’s reputation for partying against her, well, maybe it would. 

“I’m not going to call my mom,” Addy says slowly, almost numb. “But I am going to do something you won’t like.” 

“You are not going to call Colette fucking French,” Beth spits like a cobra, face contorting with fury. 

It’s weird but seeing Beth fired up, seeing Beth angry— this comforts Addy a little bit. Seeing Beth angry is easier than seeing her shake. A furious Beth feels more familiar to Addy than a terrified one. 

“No,” Addy says. “I’m not.” 

She slips her phone out of her pocket and scrolls through her contacts until she finds the person she was thinking of. She taps her thumb to his name, watching Beth watch her and training her eyes there. She’s seen enough of Kurtz. She’d seen enough of him even before he became the gruesome scene on the floor. 

“Uh, hello?” 

“Sarge. Remember that night you drove me and Beth back from Lanvers?” Addy thinks of the gun in Beth’s hands, and then Beth’s head upon her shoulder. “How you said to call you if we needed help again?” 

There is a pause. She hears Will inhale on the other side of the phone. It’s almost 4 o’clock in the morning but he sounds so clear. Addy doesn’t believe he’s gotten a wink of sleep all night. 

“Do you need help, Addy?” 

“Yes.” Addy clenches her free hand into a fist, nails biting into the meat of her palm. “We both do.” 

* * *

While they’re waiting for Will, Addy takes Beth to the bathroom. She helps Beth take off her bloody clothes, balls them up and stuffs them into one of the many wrinkled plastic bags stored beneath the sink. Beth steps into the shower but doesn’t accomplish much by herself. Just stands there like a statue, head bowed, uninjured eye fixed on her own naked body. 

So Addy helps her with this too, stripping down and stepping in there with her. Addy turns on the spray, moistens the sea sponge loofa with Beth’s tropical beach body wash. 

“You shouldn’t have called him,” Beth says when she finally speaks again. 

“You shouldn’t have called me,” Addy retorts without any true bite behind the words. 

She scrubs the loofa down the slope of Beth’s shoulders, up and down her arms. 

“Who else would I call?” Beth huffs, incredulous. “You’re my girl, Addy. You’re the only one…” 

Addy sees the steam float around them but she’s still too numb to feel the heat of the spray. 

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmurs, hoping that saying it might make it true. 

The suds turn pink from the blood as she scrubs the stains off Beth’s skin. In another time, far away from here, being in the shower with Beth wouldn’t be something mechanical, it’d be something magical. It would be lips upon lips and hands seeking touch, Addy with her knees to the bath mat and Beth with her head tipped back, maybe, yeah. 

But they are very in the here and now, where a dead man rests downstairs and his blood swirls down the drain mixed with Beth’s, stark against the bleached white of the tub. 

* * *

“Jesus Christ,” flies out of Will’s mouth as he beholds his fallen comrade, eyes bugging out of his skull. 

Beth flinches and Addy sucks in a breath, taking a protective step in front of her. 

“It was self-defense,” she urges him, unyielding. “Look at what he did to her face, Will.” 

Will’s gaze flickers from Kurtz to the giant, puffy plum that is Beth’s eye socket. 

“He did more than just hit,” Beth adds, so quiet as she wraps her arms around herself. “Again…”

Will’s tongue nervously swipes over his lips. He looks down again, eyes panning over Kurtz’s mangled, conspicuously pants-less body. Something in them hardens to flint. 

“He deserved this,” Will declares, head jerking up. “God, girls, he was a monster. I know he deserved this. But you didn’t— you don’t deserve any of this. We’re gonna have to call somebody.” 

Beth stiffens behind Addy, spine going ramrod straight. 

“We did call someone,” Addy insists as apprehension creeps into her chest. “Sarge, we called you! You said you’d be here if we needed your help getting out of another bad situation!” 

Will rakes a hand through his hair, breath stuttering as he struggles for words. 

“Okay, this is obviously not what I was thinking of, Addy! I meant like, giving you a ride, or making sure you got home safe, normal shit!” 

He throws his hands up and behind her, Beth clutches onto her wrist. When Addy glances back, she peers at it, Beth’s hand curled around her. So tight it might be cutting off her circulation. Addy can still see red beneath Beth’s fingernails, lingering despite her best efforts to scrub her anew in the shower. 

“I’m sorry,” Will continues and he sounds like he means it, voice thick, shoulders slumping heavily. “We’ve got to go to the police on this one. Tell them the truth, that it was self-defense. I’ll back you up, I promise. I know what Kurtz was.” 

“Addy,” Beth whispers, raw with desperation. 

It won’t work. They both know it. They both know what would happen. Sutton Grove would run wild with this. Beth the party animal, history of underage drinking, she-shark of the school, eating up all the minnows that swim across her path. Corporal Kurtz, patriotic marine, signed up to serve his beloved country. Fucking sleaze, sure, but run a photo of him in uniform in the paper, run it alongside the one of Beth in her plaid miniskirt with her middle finger in the air, and suddenly she’s some ungrateful slut who killed a hero. 

Maybe not. Maybe Faith Hanlon would be on the case and she would know Beth wouldn’t even be capable of something like this unless her hand was forced. Maybe what happened at the Playland would work for Beth instead of against her. Maybe Will’s testimony would turn the tables. 

Maybe. 

Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

There’s a bottle sticking out of this dead guy’s neck and Beth cannot afford ‘maybe.’ 

“What happened to your knuckles, Sarge?” Addy asks pointedly, staring at the freshly faded black eye on the face of corpse. 

“What?” 

“Your knuckles,” Addy repeats cooly, shifting her eyes from Kurtz’s face to Will’s hands, indeed still bruised. “I saw you icing them the other day.” 

Will gets quiet. 

“You know. When we were at Coach’s house. I meant to ask you, but then you and Coach got busy, so…” 

Beth’s grip is insufferably tight on Addy’s wrist but she doesn’t make her let go. Not now. Not tonight. After what easily could’ve happened tonight— Beth lifeless on the floor instead of Kurtz —Addy doesn’t think she’ll ever make her let go again. 

Will grimaces, turning from Addy to Kurtz’s bruised, dead face and flexing his injured knuckles. 

Beth isn’t the only one who’s always watching. Addy’s spent so much time around her, it simply feels natural to do the same. 

“Do you have a tarp?” Will asks, blinking up to Beth. “Or a large rug?” 

Beth releases Addy’s wrist and exhales a sigh that would sound exasperated to anyone who didn’t know her. All Addy can hear is the relief in it. 

“Yeah,” she answers. “Big ass beige rug in the front hall.” 

“Let’s use that,” Will decides warily. 

“Where are we going to take him?” Addy asks, irresistibly looking back down to the puddle of blood. “Lanvers?” 

“Hell no,” Will scoffs, disgruntled. “We’ve still got a few hours before we’re gonna be missed. We’re going to Detroit.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure Sutton Grove can't be _too_ far from Detroit, since they mention Stony Creek and Sterling Heights in the series, and Abbott took inspiration from her own teenage years in Grosse Pointe for the book. But if it is actually, then for the sake of this AU, it's not. 
> 
> Again, will get to typos in the morning since I always post things when my brain is tired mush for some reason.


End file.
